4 Ways Your Email Marketing is Leaking Sales

Topics:

Content Marketing

Lead Generation

4 Ways Your Email Marketing is Leaking Sales

Today, not having an email address is the digital equivalent of not having a home. We use email for so many digital touchpoints; whether that be accessing Facebook, shopping online or even banking. Email also provides an ability that many other marketing mediums lack; to create valuable and personal touchpoints – at scale.

That’s exactly why email marketing is such an important tool in any marketer’s toolkit, and if there is a chance to improve your EDM efforts it may be the smartest move you’ll make all year. Besides this…

In fact, ask any online entrepreneur :

“Email has become one of the our most profitable channels. If you deliver a curated piece of content to someone at the right time they are more than likely to open it and come look. It adds a lot of value that other channels can’t do, in a very non-imposing but very personalised way, to deliver information to people that’s useful to them.”

So, how do I know if my campaigns are leaking sales?
When it comes to email marketing, the key symptoms of potentially missed sales will be:

Low open rates

Low click-through rates

High unsubscribe rates

High bounce rates

To put this in perspective, let’s use the value calculator below to see how these metrics can have a drastic impact on your email marketing efforts.

EDM Calculator

Open Rate:

CTR:

LP Conv Rate:

Email List Size:

Lead Value:

EDM Results

Leads:

Total Lead Value:

Now that we can see how these metrics intertwine and can have a measurable impact on your bottom line, let’s get into the crux of tightening those leaking faucets within your EDM campaigns.

Low open rates

Open rates are a distinct reflection on your subject lines. Going off MailChimp statistics, an average open rate for all company sizes will be approximately 22%.

Most popular email marketing platforms will provide this data for you, however, it’s important to understand the foundations and dedicate time to testing your subject lines. Here at Rocket Agency, we’ve onboarded clients with open rates below 5% and helped these rates soar above 40%. So, if your open rate is well below 22%, you probably have much room for improvement!

2. Addressing low click-through rates

Click-through rates (CTRs) reflect your email content and in particular, your call-to-action (CTA) elements that spur further activity from the reader. MailChimp industry stats conclude an average CTR to be around 2.69% of all viewers clicking through to read a landing page.

If the email is your invitation, then your landing page is the party. To improve your email CTRs you should think about using low-commitment CTAs that invite people to click for an appealing reason.

3. Lowering un-subscribe rates

A high unsubscribe rate can unveil a whole host of reasons, some of which include:

Overly frequent emails

A recipient who didn’t sign up or doesn’t remember signing up

Incorrect or no list segmentation

Irrelevant content

Emails that aren’t rendering properly on various devices or browsers

Hard sell emails that come across as too pushy.

Whilst an ideal unsubscribe rate would be zero, the average rate comes in at 0.23%. If your rate is higher than this, ask yourself if you might be a victim to some of the above reasons and work to improve on them.

In addition to this, you want to ensure that your email list is constantly growing with quality recipients. We refer to this as ABC:

Always Be Collecting.

4. Focusing on high bounce rates

Bounce rates are categorised by soft bounces and hard bounces. A soft bounce is a temporary failure of delivery, and usually occurs if the recipient’s mailbox is full or the email is too large. A hard bounce is a permanent delivery issue and occurs when the recipient’s email is no longer in use, the server is not accepting emails or even that your ISP is blocked, to name a few possibilities. A good rule of thumb here is to keep your total bounce rate under 2%

If you’re noticing bounce rates consistently higher than 2%, you must investigate your list. Possible issues that may arise if you do not take any action will involve damaging your reputation with the recipient’s ISP and consequently degrading the deliverability of your future emails to other recipients within that ISP.

Email marketing is a vital element of many growth strategies, and it’s worth investing time and energy to make sure it’s engaging as many of your customers and prospects as possible. If you feel that your email marketing isn’t performing as well as it should be, give your campaigns a quick check-up against these four potential causes. The most effective email marketers are constantly iterating and improving their emails. Do the same, and you’ll see the traction and demand you’re looking for.

Remember: Subscribers want to do business with a company that treats emailing them as a privilege, not a transaction. If you’d like some specialist assistance tailoring your email strategy, contact the team at Rocket Agency. We are always here to help.

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by Sachin Rajah

Technical Account Director

Sachin is a passionate digital marketer and adviser leading growth strategies for his diverse client base.

Sachin has also been responsible for winning several industry awards for his work on client campaigns, taking out the Google Premier Partner Award for Display Innovation AU/NZ and also being a nominated finalist at the AMY Awards 2017 for his work on two campaigns!

Apart from winnings awards, Sachin lives and breathes Facebook, not purely to organise his busy social calendar, but because of the ever-evolving capabilities of the platform to generate leads for his clients.